Regeneration of Monsters

[Asgard The Elder]

Will the animals / monsters come back over time?

With EB1 I noticed that when the critters were cleaned out of an area no more were to be found (unless you overstayed your welcome by resting in an area too long.)

Not having the technical background I do not know if it is possible to randomly repopulate the world with the nasty little things that bite first and ask questions later? Like with ants You never get them all...One day, six months or a year later you know they will be back - if you will notice - nature repopulates quickly - even in the most devistated areas.

[Rollor]

I hope that wont be changed. Games where monster come back after some time, always make me feel like there is no point in killing them the first time around.

[Dragonlady]

I don't mind too much..the not repopulating. However, I think 'natural' animals/insects might after some time. Major 'baddies' no. What would be the point of killing of a bandit thief for a quest when he'd just pop back up again. That's the one thing I dislike about Minions of Mirth. Everything repops all the time and you have to remember to drop/expunge the 'quest' item all the time. Boooorrrring.

[Asgard The Elder]

Think of it in a different way - You a walking around trying to find a little critter to get you up to the next level, you only need 2 or 3 points to put you over the top - your level isn't very high (2 or 3) what would you rather meet, a salamander or a minotaur?

The regeneration process would have to follow some guidlines Like a limit to how many or per cent of the original population.. say 20% then for every five you get rid of only one could be regenerated by the system. For example in the Barons Thicket the original population may be 20 raptors. After you get rid of all 20 whats left? I myself would rather have a chance of encountering 4 new raptors while I am walking through the forest with a 70 pound object just to keep me on my toes.

And as Dragonlady stated not the Named bad guys but salamanders, noximanders, raptors, goblins etc in general. and in their own areas.

[Kreador Freeaxe]

I don't mind too much..the not repopulating. However, I think 'natural' animals/insects might after some time. Major 'baddies' no. What would be the point of killing of a bandit thief for a quest when he'd just pop back up again. That's the one thing I dislike about Minions of Mirth. Everything repops all the time and you have to remember to drop/expunge the 'quest' item all the time. Boooorrrring.

The repopulating of named baddies is necessary for the MMO part of MoM, but ridiculous for the solo part, you're right. Also it would be useless in Book II, as clearly it won't be an MMO.

I wouldn't mind some creatures coming back (in Book I, sometimes the wasps would repopulate a little, but usually in fixed situations). It adds a little risk to the wandering, but don't make it every twenty turns you look around and there's another noximander.

[mkreku]

I think the problem will be balancing the game is critters repeatedly spawn back into areas formerly cleared by the adventurer. It would be like an infinite stream of experience points.

Personally, I don't mind at all if one or two critters per map respawns to surprise me a little white I'm exploring, but it should be insignificant compared to the amount of critters in the area when it was untouched.

[krisklef]

I actually like the idea of monsters (slowly) repopulating some areas. For Book I Noximanders, fungusblobs, bats, goblins, some carniraptors, that sort of thing. The bees were stated to "eventually go away" by one of the NPCs, so one would expect diminishing repops there.

My reasoning is the decision about quicktravel vs walking everywhere. I used quicktravel to return from damaging encounters, quickly unload heavy loot, etc. I often walked places, though, because I know I'll be able to recover HP/MP without the risk of random encounters. If one were allowed to quicktravel through areas that might repop, then I would have to make a desicion: quicktravel and recover HP by resting or hoteling, or walk and take the (small) risk of encounters. Either way, nothing's free: either I risk encounter or pay for a safe night's rest. Or use that great well in Blackwater

Regarding the XP imbalance: if you aren't repopulating tauraxes or 'raptors all the time, it won't make THAT much difference in available XP except for extremely patient players. We are assuming a relatively slow process. But it might provide a little surprise or atmosphere for the careless adventurer who thinks all the baddies are dead.

And that would probably be me . . . .

[acoustibop]

Besides, you can always repopulate Tauraxes by getting a bit of kip!

[Necromis]

I would say the wasps would be the only one that would never repopulate, when using Book I as an example. At least if you killed the queen. If the queen was not killed then the wasps would be the ones that would rapidly repopulate. This type of logic would have to be added into the the code. So that it could check to see if the queen was dead or not. Not really difficult. if I was doing it in VB I would have a stored value for the queen being alive or not, say a string that says "alive" or "dead." default would be "alive" and when she is killed its value would be changed to "dead" then at respawn it would do a check and if value = "dead" no respawn, or respawn reduction, and loop down to 0% after time. If value = "alive" respawn, or respawn increase, and loop up to a set max level.

You can also program respawn by a set array of creatures each respawn. Have the first spawning be array 0, then on each entry to a map check the count of creatures and loop as necessary through the array.

[Pixelante]

I really liked knowing that I could run back along paths I'd already cleared to get away from aggro. I'm the kind of player who pushes the limits of what they can actually do at their level, so being able to methodically clear space--and know that it's safe behind me--is something I valued.

Just weighing in on the other side of the argument here.

[Rune_74]

I think if you are going to repopulate maps you would have to limit the xp gain as you get higher, so that at level 1 you get more for the kill of the salamander then you would say at level 5.

[ChrisHallett]

Regeneration of monsters is great fun, when done correctly.

Obviously major bosses and quest foes should never regen, but sub-bosses, and regular minions should slowly repop over time.

Perhaps set some sort of timeout so that you can clear an area and nothing shows up for two or four in-game days, then they slowly come back up to a certain number (obviously never as many as there were originally, after all, you did go through and clear the area.)

So if you clear one full area of 60 monsters in total (1 boss, 10 sub bosses, and 49 minions) nothing shows up for, let's say, three days. Then every day 1 comes back, then after a week in-game two every day, after another in-game week 3 a day, until you build back up to a maximum of about half the monsters there were populating the area originally.

Maybe every time you clear an area, the total number of regen'd baddies goes down by half, all the way to 0?

[dteowner]

The problem with regen is that you have to make a difficult decision about scaling. Maps generally have a level range tied to them, and the critters reflect that range. It doesn't take too many times of "killing level 1 rats with my level 30 party" for regen to become nothing more than a nuisance. OTOH, increasing the difficulty of the regens has certain drawbacks as well. When all is said and done, it's easier to avoid the decision all together by not doing regen.

Besides, I like mowing maps.

[devinv]

I always liked the idea that random encounters with baddies were more likely at night, it just makes sense. Regeneration is not necessary but I don't like the idea of an area remaining totally devoid of monster activity for the rest of the game. Random encounters happen while you're sleeping, there's no reason why they shouldn't happen while you're awake and walking around. I think this happens in book 1, but it's hard to be sure. I think it's important to be able to avoid a fight if you want to most of the time, whether because you're in bad shape or you aren't interested in killing rats anymore, as you say.

The problem with regen is that you have to make a difficult decision about scaling. Maps generally have a level range tied to them, and the critters reflect that range. It doesn't take too many times of "killing level 1 rats with my level 30 party" for regen to become nothing more than a nuisance. OTOH, increasing the difficulty of the regens has certain drawbacks as well. When all is said and done, it's easier to avoid the decision all together by not doing regen.

Besides, I like mowing maps.

[Unclever title]

One alternative to facing annoying low level enemies is maybe putting something in that maybe when a bunch of them attack and see that you're killing them with one hit each that they (seemingly) get wise and then run away. Cause if it's just one or two attacking you it's not such and annoyance but if there happened to be a fair amount respawned then it's more annoying.

Another option would be for enemies to recognize that you're out of their league on sight, but this is less realistic for most enemies.